Song Identification iPhone App: Midomi Ultra 2.0

A great free iPhone app I've been using for a while now just got a huge update, and I've been loving it more and more with each passing moment. It's not as much fun as an iPhone game, but it'll certainly help you pass the time on a long car ride or on the train (if your train plays music).

Midomi is a song identification application, which allows you to press a large orange button, hold your iPhone up to some music playing in your car, in Starbucks, or on an elevator, and find out the artist and title of the song. It's free, and you can grab it right from the iPhone App Store.

Initially, I was using the ubiquitous Shazam for this service. Shazam offers a similar user experience, but with a seemingly much larger library of songs. It would grab songs from the 70's all the way up to today, and provide me with links to Youtube, iTunes, and other places to hear the song again. The problem with Shazam, however, is that it's slow. Furthermore, Midomi adds a whole host of other features that Shazam doesn't, or won't do.

Midomi allows me to sing or hum the song, as well as just say an artist or title. This is great for when I know what song I want, and I just want to find the YouTube video for it, or a link to purchase it in the iTunes Music Store. Midomi honestly makes purchasing the music through iTunes way too easy, and I've already spent a ton of money there.

In the new update, Midomi streamlined their product, and I'm newly in love with it. Instead of 5 different tabs for Listen, Sing/Hum, Say, Type, they simply have one home screen. There's a huge button which allows you to "FastTag," their new version of Listen, or sing/hum. Below that is a smaller button which allows you to say the song or artist, and next to that is an even smaller button which allows you to type.

There's only two more tabs in Midomi, a history which allows you to see your past searches, and a help tab which simply explains how to use it.

Overall, the new Midomi is a great, streamlined update, and I can't imagine anyone wanting anything more from a song identification app. Now if only they had a feature to forcibly remove songs stuck in someone's head!